Top 500 Anne Lamott Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”

— Anne Lamott

202. “It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”

— Anne Lamott

203. “My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering. Sometimes we feel that we are barely pulling ourselves forward through a tight tunnel on badly scraped-up elbows. But we do come out the other side, exhausted and changed.”

— Anne Lamott

204. “There is ecstasy in paying attention.”

— Anne Lamott

205. “Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.”

— Anne Lamott

206. “We were raised to believe in books, music, and nature.”

— Anne Lamott

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207. “I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me – that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

— Anne Lamott

208. “My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.”

— Anne Lamott

209. “Certainty is missing the point entirely.”

— Anne Lamott

210. “But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.”

— Anne Lamott

211. “When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.”

— Anne Lamott

212. “You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.”

— Anne Lamott

213. “We’re out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.”

— Anne Lamott

214. “The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.”

— Anne Lamott

215. “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.”

— Anne Lamott

216. “Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.”

— Anne Lamott

217. “I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that’s what Jesus said to do.”

— Anne Lamott

218. “Butterflies and birds are like one perfect teaspoon of creation.”

— Anne Lamott

219. “A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It’s a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.”

— Anne Lamott

220. “No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way.”

— Anne Lamott

221. “For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.”

— Anne Lamott

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222. “Laughter is the key that grace has arrived.”

— Anne Lamott

223. “It is in many people’s best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours, and the whole world’s, to proceed.”

— Anne Lamott

224. “I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.”

— Anne Lamott

225. “If you’re lucky you find your way into a spiritual community and you start to find the great teachers of all the ages who said the same thing. There’s only love, you’re made of love.”

— Anne Lamott

226. “God makes a way out of no way.”

— Anne Lamott

227. “I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.”

— Anne Lamott

228. “It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.”

— Anne Lamott

229. “One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness.”

— Anne Lamott

230. “When you love something like reading – or drawing or music or nature – it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great.”

— Anne Lamott

231. “Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.”

— Anne Lamott

232. “Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”

— Anne Lamott

233. “Feeding a baby is like filling a hole with putty – you get it in and then you sort of shave off all the excess around the hole and get it back in, like you’re spackling.”

— Anne Lamott

234. “The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God’s identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it’s the truth.”

— Anne Lamott

235. “Haters want us to hate them, because hate is incapacitating. When we hate, we can’t operate from our real selves, which is our strength.”

— Anne Lamott

236. “Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck.”

— Anne Lamott

237. “He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.”

— Anne Lamott

238. “My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don’t wait for inspiration.”

— Anne Lamott

239. “It feels like I’m babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.”

— Anne Lamott

240. “Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.”

— Anne Lamott

241. “There is a door we all want to walk through and writing can help you find it and open it.”

— Anne Lamott

242. “And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That’s what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.”

— Anne Lamott

243. “That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part.”

— Anne Lamott

244. “Also, I have a pouch below my belly, whereas I’d always had a thin waist before. Now there’s this situation down there, low and grabbable. If it had a zipper, you could store stuff in there, like a fanny pack.”

— Anne Lamott

245. “A whole lot of us believers, of all different religions, are ready to turn back the tide of madness by walking together, in both the dark and the light – in other words, through life – registering voters as we go, and keeping the faith.”

— Anne Lamott

246. “I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon – because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.”

— Anne Lamott

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247. “Gratitude is seeing how someone changed your heart and quality of life, helped you become the good parts of the person you are.”

— Anne Lamott

248. “So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer – please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.”

— Anne Lamott

249. “My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It’s not anything lofty, and it doesn’t have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor.”

— Anne Lamott

250. “I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.”

— Anne Lamott